How the Irish became white
Noel Ignatiev (Author)
The Irish came to America in the eighteenth century, fleeing a homeland under foreign occupation and a caste system that regarded them as the lowest form of humanity. In the new country -- a land of opportunity -- they found a very different form of social hierarchy, one that was based on the color of a person's skin. In this volume, Ignatiev tells the story of how the oppressed became the oppressors; how the new Irish immigrants achieved acceptance among an initially hostile population only by proving that they could be more brutal in their oppression of African Americans than the nativists. --From publisher description
Print Book, English, 2009
First edition
Routledge, New York, 2009